Are you hurting your performance and competitiveness?

Poor IT, hardware, software, and network support services can cost your organization a bundle in terms of lost productivity, poor customer service, frustration, lost business, and other issues that negatively impact business performance.

Most likely, the impact of IT on your employees, customers, and bottom line is not fully understood. The best and most cost-effective way to evaluate the effectiveness of internal and external IT services is to conduct comprehensive IT customer satisfaction surveys / IT user surveys. These surveys collect information, tips, and knowledge from your organization’s employees about the strengths and weaknesses of IT services. When asked, employees will tell you in detail what needs improvement and why. They will tell you how IT issues are affecting your ability to do your job and to sell and support customers.

Below are the actual feedback received on various IT customer satisfaction surveys / IT help desk surveys. Feedback demonstrates the frustration and impact on productivity and work performance that poor IT has on employees, customers, and business performance. Taking action on these IT issues can significantly boost business and employee performance. How many of the following and other IT issues are your company’s employees and customers experiencing:

Every time I’ve had to contact tech support, it takes hours (if not days) for someone to fix the problem …

· Look for better types of laptops to support the field. We are putting together great spreadsheets, great presentations, etc. all the time, and our PCs crashing and losing work is ineffective. Is there a better laptop to support this type of business and the work we do?

The issue is not support, but the limitations IT management imposes on attorneys: In the absence of abuse, attorneys need access to many applications and hardware that IT is reluctant to provide. An attorney, especially a partner, is entitled to more courtesy and trust. Just one example is the blackberry problem. If I tell you it’s dead, believe me, don’t quote me the policy on the cost of a new default. My lost productivity will pay 100 defaults or more.

· We are a copier company! Our copiers in the office are down. We have functions on our copiers that no one in the office knows how to use.

About half of the experiences have been with a rude person who seems upset. Very condescending attitude.

The first comment from tech support is always that the user did something wrong. Also, they take forever, weeks, sometimes never, to re-resolve any issues that need follow-up. There is no system in place to make sure there is follow-up when needed. Also, if the problem has to go to the systems, the people in that department decide what to address and what not to address, they don’t respond at all, and they don’t even follow up with Technical Support.

· If the problem is too difficult, it tends to be hidden under the carpet. People work on it initially, but when it seems too difficult, they give up and ignore the problem, without a satisfactory resolution (that is, the problem is solved or we can’t fix it).

Once we contact a technical support person, they are often unable to help with the problem, exhibiting a minimal set of skills and knowledge of our systems, or giving conflicting answers. In my opinion, our technical staff is below the industry average. I am sure they are hampered by the shortcomings of our systems, but they are also separate and untouched by the concerns of the systems.

Escalated issues take too long to resolve

· Since we switched to Archive Site, Outlook doesn’t auto-fill my email addresses when I start typing. I waste an incredible amount of time retyping email addresses every day.

The system is incredibly slow. My computer freezes at least once or twice a day when performing routine tasks. I suspect we are trying to do too much for CPU resources.

Sometimes the computer or the internet just doesn’t work or they get very slow and start to freeze. These slow periods, where you can hardly do anything on your computer, sometimes last up to 45 minutes. It’s really frustrating and causes customers to be billed more than they should.

Remote access is terrible – Citrix kicks me out all the time, causing delays and multiple times lost work products that couldn’t be recovered.

I have never seen such a dysfunctional set of networks and computer systems as ours. The frequency with which servers, programs, and systems in general go offline for repair, reboot, and service is ridiculous. When programs are running, they often crash on individual PCs due to deficiencies in our systems.

The only thing worse than our systems for hours, are those systems after hours. Using Citrix is ​​hardly better than no access, often resulting in the loss of critical documents, and lacking key software and functionality.

NETWORK SPEED IS PROBLEM NUMBER 1. IT MUST BE TREATED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Also, will we ever get an updated version of Word and Outlook? 2003? I often receive documents that I cannot open because the sender is using the newer version of Word.

· The laptops I review are generally dysfunctional. I was on a flight to AC and when I turned on my laptop, I found that the fully charged battery life was 20 minutes. This is unacceptable. I have also had many other problems with laptops. (I should point out that these issues are not due to IT staff, but rather to equipment issues.) From my experience, it appears that all of our laptops are five years old or older. We should consider renting new laptops and replacing them every year (or, better yet, following our competitors and handing out laptops to all the lawyers who want one).

· I am not satisfied with my Blackberry. The ones I have received are either outdated or reconditioned and problematic for two model years. I am so dissatisfied that I use my personal iPhone to check my email. But this is not a good solution because the company does not support iPhones and it does not help me pay for my data plan.

· My desktop is a problem. It is very slow and when I have too many programs open it makes a sound similar to that of a jet engine. I’m having trouble running WestLaw Next and other flash-based programs. I think my desktop processor (P4) is almost a decade old.

In general, there is a feeling of throwing arrangements over the wall. Technical support must work more closely with end users to understand issues and listen to the end user. We have received responses in the past to the effect that it only loads and can be fixed later if it is wrong. That’s not the way to go: most of us don’t have time to do our jobs once, let alone twice.

Answer the phone or communicate with people in a timely manner. Emails are completely ignored.

I had to wait until my Blackberry stopped working when traveling on business to get a new one. The company didn’t care that my old Blackberry was so old that I couldn’t open most of the attachments I needed to open in order to get my work done while on business. I was constantly calling my secretary to ask me to read documents or open articles for me. This was all because the two-year period had not passed before he was entitled to a new one. I understand the need for a policy, but exceptions to the policy should be allowed.

This is the worst: my Blackberry is damaged and is being taken care of by updates that I do, but I do not have such a hard replacement for me: stupidity and arrogance.

Arrange organization between Oracle and other systems used for customer management / billing. I think a new system would do wonders to keep customers happy and minimize returns and address issues.